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Archive - UT2004 Tutorials - Lava & Slime

This tutorial assumes that you have a basic knowledge of the editor and how make terrain, if you don't know about this then you should probably find out
about that first from a site such as UDN
This tutorial is an extension to some of the concepts I expained in "Water and Cube Maps".

So, quickly first I subtracted a 2048x2048x2040 box, added ZoneInfo & TerrainInfo and copied the SkyBox from BR-IceFields. Also added a PlayerStart and a Flak Cannon.
Which gave me this to start with,
I'm going to fill the small pool with Lava and the big pool with Slime.

STEP 1: VOLUMES
The first thing to realise about volumes is that they are all the same thing, the only difference in the properties.
All of the options in the volumes menu are just presets of options that are free to be changed.
(This is the same as Special Brushes for UED2, if you used them)
One complaint that I have heard about lava is that when adding a lava volume in the editor is that the physics are wrong, you just fall to the bottom instead of floating.
I decided that the quickest why to solve this would be to use a volume with the correct physics and to change the colours and pain-causing values later.
The volume with the correct physics is of course the water volume. So first place the red builder brush around the area you want to be a fluid and then select WaterVolume
from the volumes menu.

In this example I've used three volumes. Two for the dog-leg of the slime pool and one for the Lava pool.

Finally in step 1 the properties of the volumes need to be changed a little.

Property

For theLava Volume

For theSlime Volumes

Description

-PhysicsVolume-bPainCausing

True

True

Tells the game to hurt the player while they are inside the volume.

-PhysicsVolume-DamagePerSec

80

15

How much damage the game causes for each second the player is inside the volume.

-PhysicsVolume-DamageType

Class'Engine.FellLava'(This tells the game to turn your body to a skeleton when you die)

Class'Gameplay.Corroded'(This doesn't change the player model on death but changes the death message from Drowned to Dissolved)

The type of damage the volume causes the player.

-Volume-LocationName

"in the lava"

"in the slime"

Text to describe the location of the player while they are inside the volume.

-VolumeFog-DistanceFogColor-B

0

46

The RGB colour value for the distance fog shown while inside the volume.

-VolumeFog-DistanceFogColor-G

0

250

-VolumeFog-DistanceFogColor-R

249

51

-VolumeFog-DistanceFogEnd

300

2000 (Default value)

Defines the start and end for the distance fog view by the player while they are inside the volume. The start and end for the lava volume have been reduced to give the liquid a thinker feel and because it is a smaller volume than the slime.

-VolumeFog-DistanceFogStart

0.1

8 (Default value)

The properties should now look something like this:

Lava

Slime

STEP 2: SURFACES
The first thing that is needed for the surfaces are textures.
There is a great lava texture in the package "SC_Volcano_T" in the group "Lava" called "SC_MagmaHot_T"
However, some property changes are needed, so a new texture needs to be created.
So first bring up your texture browser and click on "File" and then "New".
This brings up the new material window. Enter the package as "myLevel" and the name as "shader01", leave the properties set to shader and you'll be set to click "New" to create the new texture.